Cozy and Comfortable

Dominique and Barbara Levesque’s renovated Crestview home makes the most of its limited square footage

By Mauri Elbel | Photos by Dror Baldinger

Published: June 7, 2016

Neighborhood CrestviewBedrooms 2Bathrooms 1Square feet 900Design-build firm Another Great House

Tucked away on a tree-lined street in charming Crestview, a remodeled late-1940s house splashed in bold purple peeks out from a lushly landscaped yard. Inside the 900-square-foot home, Dominique and Barbara Levesque sit in their sunlit living room, an open and airy space shared with their bedroom, kitchen and dining room. As two energetic dogs leap from their laps to the floor, eight tiny paws creating a staccato of clicks against original oak floors, the couple tells the story behind the property Dominique was renovating when they first met, which soon became the couple’s first home and their wedding venue.

A tour through the home doesn’t take long, revealing warm, well-edited spaces designed to make the most of limited square footage. “Every room in this house is multifunctional,” says Barbara, walking from the shared living room/bedroom and into the back bedroom, which currently doubles as an office and music space where mounted guitars line the walls.

Dominique, a designer, builder, landscaper and entrepreneur, renovated the entire home himself. A Crestview resident for more than two decades, he has lived on four different streets in the quaint neighborhood, and his design-build firm, Another Great House, has remodeled and built dozens of homes that seek to preserve the neighborhood’s aesthetic while incorporating modern and green building techniques. Though this house wasn’t for sale and was filled to the brim with the original owner’s belongings, he was drawn to the property.

“I loved the house,” says Dominique, who bought the home in 2009. “I saw the potential it had. It had good bones and framing. I was very inspired by it. It was basically a blank slate waiting to be redone.”

Initially, Dominique envisioned a bachelor pad—a modern Colorado-style cabin with an open studio concept. But that idea didn’t last long. He met Barbara in 2010 when the house was completely gutted with nothing but sheets hanging in the windows and a fecund vegetable garden growing in the backyard. The full-scale renovation was a step-by-step process that took fewer than six months from start to finish, with Dominique living in a shed at the back of the property through the duration of the project. The goal was to knock down dividing walls to create an open space that felt fresh and clean while maintaining the integrity of the home’s original structure.

“The house had old-style shiplap pine as the original roof, so we took the time to preserve the old roof,” says Dominique. “I wanted to utilize the original construction style as an interior element; otherwise, it would have remained an eight-foot ceiling with no real dynamic to it. Once I took down the original sheetrock ceiling, I discovered gorgeous web trusses, so I sanded them down over the course of three days. With the help of two guys I stained all the trusses and added Anigre paneling to the walls to cover the space between the former ceiling and the roof.”

Dominique replaced collapsing trusses with Douglas fir timbers and refinished existing oak floors, which together give the home a timeless character. Removing the wall between the bedroom and living room created one fluid space where repurposed furniture blends flawlessly with a few modern purchases and natural elements such as raw Brazilian slate floors in the kitchen and bathroom and mahogany trim around reframed double-pane windows. The ample use of wood brings a connection to the outdoors.

Barbara and Dominique did all of the landscaping by hand—planting drought-hardy native and adaptive species ranging from Yucca rostrata, Arizona cypress and Lacey oaks to Knock Out Roses, saguaro cactus and Mexican sage bush. A custom carriage-style gate crafted from cedar and welded steel by Hill Country Garage Doors, which Dominique also owns, serves as a beautiful transition from the front of the home to the sprawling back yard where they got married in 2012.

The drought-hardy landscaping has matured over the few years, and the Levesques rarely turn on the irrigation system, one of the numerous sustainable features Dominique incorporated to increase the old home’s efficiency. No stranger to sustainability, Dominique has built a handful of five-star green-rated homes awarded by the city of Austin and was featured on TLC’s Greenovate for a previous Crestview renovation.

Despite the home’s modest size, there’s an openness that exists in both its layout and the couple’s lifestyle. Both Barbara and Dominique say coexisting in a small space where there are no doors to hide excess stuff—or emotions—behind has kept clutter out of their home and their marriage.

“We prune a lot and purge a lot,” Barbara says of their well-groomed space. “We can’t stay upset with each other for too long because we are constantly bumping into each other. We have a pretty healthy relationship because we have to.”